Two of the year’s biggest stories were about vulnerable people demanding safe drinking water.

In other words, they were about environmental justice.

There was widespread outrage as the national media woke up to the plight of Flint, Michigan, a largely black community whose water supply remains tainted by lead that leached in from old pipes. About 1,000 miles away, efforts by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to protect its sole source of drinking water garnered national attention and a halt to construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline — at least for now.

Vulnerable communities have lived with and fought against toxic dumps, big polluters, and recalcitrant government officials for at least as long as companies have produced pollution. That helps explain why communities of color struggle with higher rates of asthma and cancer. What seemed to change in 2016 is that the national media paid closer attention.

The latest example? St. Joseph, Louisiana. The state’s governor declared a public health emergency for the overwhelmingly black town after tests revealed elevated levels of lead and copper in water that runs brown out of the tap from deteriorating pipes.

With any luck, you’ll be hearing more about environmental justice stories in 2017. And with a bit more luck, attention and awareness will bring about some necessary change.

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Abortion rights are headed back to the Supreme Court, this time as a First Amendment issue.

On Tuesday, the court will hear arguments about a California law that tries to clarify the facts that women receive about their reproductive rights. The accuracy of that information becomes increasingly important as environmental disasters — which are growing more, uh, disastrous — endanger women more than men. Women can be better prepared by having full control of their reproductive decisions.

Crisis pregnancy centers are organizations, often masquerading as medical clinics, that attempt to dissuade women from seeking abortions. California’s Reproductive FACT Act, passed in 2016, requires reproductive health clinics and CPCs to post notices advising their clients that the state provides free or low-cost family planning, prenatal care, and abortion; and that CPCs publicize that they are not licensed to practice medicine.

Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal organization representing the centers suing the state of California, claims that the requirements of the Reproductive FACT Act are unconstitutional because they require CPCs to “promote messages that violate their convictions,” Bloomberg reports. The state of California argues that information provided by medical professionalsis publicly regulated, and that women who depend on public medical care and are unaware of their options should not be provided with confusing information.

Last February, a Gizmodo-Damn Joan investigation found that women seeking abortion clinics on Google — because, let’s be real, that’s how a lot of us find medical care — could be easily led to CPCs instead, as Google Maps does not distinguish them from real medical clinics.

After fatal crash, will people trust self-driving cars to steer us to a cleaner future?

A driverless car struck a woman in Tempe, Arizona, on Sunday night, the first time a self-driving vehicle has killed a pedestrian. The accident was caused by one of Uber’s cars operating in autonomous mode with a human safety driver at the helm.

Arizona has lax regulations on self-driving cars, so companies like Waymo and Uber have been using the state as a testing ground. Sunday’s tragedy is a setback for an industry that was already struggling to get consumers to trust self-driving tech. A 2016 survey found that 55 percent of respondents were not willing to take a ride in a driverless car.

That’s bad news for the environment. According to an analysis by UC Davis, driverless vehicles around the globe could decrease carbon dioxide emissions from traffic by more than 50 percent in 2050. That is, if people can get used to the idea of sharing rides with strangers in cars driven by … nobody.

The Department of Interior had a no good, very embarrassing week.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke insulted Japanese Americans, people with disabilities, veterans, and elders. He’s also facing heat for alleged travel luxuries and for mixing government business with politics.

Here’s the rundown:

Lawmakers are calling racism after Zinke responded to Representative Colleen Hanabusa’s request that National Park Service fund the preservation of concentration camps that held Japanese Americans during WWII by saying, “Oh, konnichiwa.” Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois tweeted, “Nope. Racism is not OK” and Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii called the comment “flippant & juvenile.”

Zinke told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that he wants to make it more expensive to visit a national park, blaming the fee hike on grandma and grandpa and other people eligible for discounted entry. “When you give discounted [rates] to the elderly, veterans, and the disabled and do it by the carload, not a whole lot people actually pay at our front door,” he said.

Residents in East Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, thought it was weird that Zinke came to their hometown in February to personally deliver a ceremonial check for $300.7 million to fund the clean-up of abandoned coal mines. Watchdogs say Zinke was using his role as Interior Secretary to give his party a leg-up in the Tuesday special election — although Democrat Conor Lamb won anyway.

And to top it all off, the Bureau of Land Management issued “vision cards” for employees to wear as a reminder of the bureau’s commitment to, what else — oil. The cards outline the bureau’s guiding principles, and feature commissioned art that depicts an oil rig and a cattle ranch.

The study, published in the journal Nature, adds more support to scientists claiming that what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. It finds that “when the Arctic is warm both cold temperatures and heavy snowfall are more frequent” in the eastern United States. That squares with strong evidence that nor’easters are getting worse, bringing more coastal flooding and more snow.

The broader context, though, shows that even while big snowstorms during the late winter are getting increasingly common in the Northeast, there’s no trend toward more total snowfall over the full winter season. Winter is the fastest-warming season, and it’s likely that in many places, especially the deep south and mid-Atlantic, what would have been small snowstorms a few decades ago now fall as rain. In Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, snow totals have plunged by more than 50 percent over the past 30 years.

EPA’s new environmental justice adviser is not down with its coal ash plan.

Orr spoke out about the EPA’s proposed rollback of federal coal ash laws to InsideClimate News. The plan would give states more autonomy in determining how they dispose of the toxic substance, which is often discarded in landfills or in “surface impoundments” — basically, giant coal ash ponds.

“It’s framed as being able to save up to $100 million for the utility industry, but what’s the trade-off?” Orr said of the proposal. “Can you really quantify and trade off the disproportionate health impacts that these communities near these ponds are going to suffer?”

On the same day it proposed the changes, the EPA dismissed a civil rights complaint filed by members of the majority black community of Uniontown, Alabama. Residents say the nearby coal ash landfill contributes to an increased risk of cancer and respiratory problems.

The academics enlisted the help of Second City, the Chicago improv group where Tina Fey and Amy Poehler got their start. The humorous version features a bumbling meteorologist failing to interpret the obvious signs of climate change, in the style of The Colbert Report. (Watch it here.)

Each video concluded with a call to action about climate change. While researchers found that the fear-inducing video was a good climate-change motivator across age groups, humor was the most effective approach for 18- to 24-year-olds.

“The humor video made people laugh more, and people who found it funny were more likely to want to plan to partake in activism, recycle more, and believe climate change is risky,” said Christofer Skurka, the paper’s lead author.

The physicist who dreamed of other universes wanted us to save the one we’ve already got.

The legendary Stephen Hawking passed away early Wednesday in his Cambridge home.

Later in his life, Hawking channeled his famous intellect into averting Armageddon. “We face awesome environmental challenges: climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans,” he wrote in an op-ed in 2016. “Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity.”

Hawking reportedly wanted his tombstone engraved with the famous equation for black hole entropy that he developed with colleague Jacob Bekenstein. “Things can get out of a black hole, both to the outside, and possibly, to another universe,” he said in a 2016 lecture. “So, if you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up. There’s a way out.”

Doctors didn’t expect Hawking to live past 25 after he was diagnosed with ALS as a young man. He surpassed their expectations by 51 years. So if he beat the odds on his own, maybe the rest of us can take inspiration from him. As Hawking once said, “Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it’s one we can prevent if we act now.”

Zinke’s proposal has stirred up strong opposition from coastal states, and that may finally be getting through to him. “I think I’m going to mark down Washington as opposed to drilling,” he told Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington during the testimony, adding that her state’s opposition would be reflected in the next draft of the plan.

Still, he has yet to exempt the West Coast states from the proposal, as he did for Florida.

Another fun fact from the hearing: After Cantwell accused Zinke of taking expensive private jets (he clarified that he took private propeller planes instead), Zinke said: “I resent the fact of your insults, I resent the fact they’re misleading, I resent the fact of the doors.”

Rex Tillerson is out, and the Koch brothers are in.

In an early morning tweet, President Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and announced that Mike Pompeo, CIA director and unofficial third Koch brother, would be taking over. In other words, a guy who believes climate change is merely an “engineering problem” is being replaced by someone who probably doesn’t think it’s even real.

Pompeo’s environmental record is pretty damning:

In a 2013 interview with C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, he argued that there’s considerable debate within the scientific community about the causes of global warming. There isn’t.

He was the largest recipient of Koch Industries campaign money in 2010. And soon afterward, as a newly elected Kansas representative, he hired a former Koch lawyer to be his chief of staff.

It looks like the Koch brothers, who’ve played a huge part in galvanizing the Republican Party against climate change, have Pompeo exactly where they want him.

And why is it important for our secretary of state to understand the basics of climate change? For one, climate change poses a “growing geopolitical threat” to national security — a threat that Pompeo appears quite unequipped to tackle.